Chachapoyas

Got any bones?
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It took us two days to reach Chachapoyas, a remote town in the Amazonas region of northern Peru, high in the Andes. We crossed the border at La Balsa, which is a fairly new crossing bang in the middle of nowhere. We weren´t just the only tourists there, we were nearly the only people there. Very friendly though, the guard woke up and came over to shake our hands and welcome us to Peru - nothing like that has ever happened before, we´re normally fighting the border rats off.

The journey up to that point had been beautiful but bouncy. We´d got to the border in the back of a chiba truck with wooden slat seats, and our arses were paying the price - the roads didn´t get any better in Peru but we did get padded seats. Now we were passing through tiny jungle villages with buildings made of adobe where families were working together to dry coffee beans in the sun and stare at the gringos. The beans must all get exported because most of the coffee we´ve drunk out here is camp coffee.

Mummies in cliff
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After an overnight stop in a frontier town we were up early to catch a collectivo to somewhere with a bus. And perhaps some tarmac. Our arses were complaining bitterly by now and we were walking like Chaplin. After two more vehicle changes we made it to Chachapoyas which is a lovely, friendly town where western tourists are still rare enough to attract stares, smiles and giggles from the locals. Must be Chesta´s funnny face.

Whilst we were there we arranged a couple of day tours. The first to see the Karajia sarcophagi, six adobe mummies set high into cliffs overlooking Rio Utcubamba that contained Chachapoya kings from 1250 years ago. There´s bones and skulls and all sorts, even a whole mummified corpse they keep on a chair in the village. Very cool. Mind you, the walk back up the canyon nearly killed us. The guide and his ten year old son had to keep waiting for us to get our breath back - they had to give us some coco leaves to chew. Incidently, the guide had a gold star inlaid in a tooth. When Charlie asked him about it he explained that it wasn´t his original tooth but a family heirloom. He had a rotten tooth cut  down with a knife and this one put in. Chalky wouldn´t like it.

Poor Mummy
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For our second tour we discovered Kuelap, a fortress the Chachapoyas had built 3,000 meters on the top of a mountain in around 800 AD. It´s incredible - not as massive as Machu Pichu but big, covering six hectares and housing about 3,000 people back in the day. And because there´s hardly any visitors so you feel like you have the place to yourself. Not a souvenir shop for miles. Nos gusta mucho.

After four days we hit the road to Trujillo, a large city on the pacific coast.